Pastor's
Page By
Fr. George Welzbacher August
5, 2007 Europe's Swan Song.
With most of Europe's nominally Christian or even formally apostate
populations plummeting, even as Muslim immigrants' numbers soar, a new
television channel will open in Germany this fall to provide a bizarre
new glimpse into Europe's Dance of Death. The following report,
originating in the London Sunday
Telegraph, appeared in the national edition of The Washington Times for July 23,
2007. Evelyn Waugh, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

24-Hour TV
Channel on Death & Dying to Air in Germany!By Tony Paterson
London Sunday Telegraph
A round-the-clock television channel devoted exclusively to aging,
death and dying will be started in Germany this fall.
Eos TV, which takes its name from the Greek Goddess of the Dawn, will
feature documentaries about graveyards, televised obituaries, tips on
finding a decent retirement home and even how to install in-house stair
lifts.
The $14.2 million project was conceived by Wolf Tilmann
Schneider, 51, a former television producer who has joined forces with
Germany's funeral association to start the 24-hour, seven-days-a
week, death-and-dying channel on cable television and the Internet.
"More than 800,000
people died in Germany last year. Multiply that by four and you
have a rough estimate of the number of relatives affected. They will be
our target audience. We are convinced that Eos TV will attract
viewers," Mr. Schneider said.
The channel aims to capitalize on the changing demographics in a
country that has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Last year
there were almost 150,000 more deaths than births, and an estimated 2.1
million elderly people were receiving professional care.
"There are millions of people confronting the issues of
aging and death," Mr. Schneider said. Viewers
who tune into Eos TV can expect to be entertained by documentaries
highlighting the beauty and tranquility of graveyards both in Germany
and abroad. "It may come as a surprise, but older people really
enjoy visiting cemeteries-not just to mourn, but for their peace and
quiet," Mr Schneider said.
Other programs will aim to provide viewers with
information about undertakers, insurance plans, retirement homes and
nursing services. Such topics as meals-on-wheels, stair lifts, bathroom
hoists and medication for age-related complaints will also be covered.
Companies targeting the elderly with their products will
be asked to fund the programs. The channel will also
provide tips about organ donation plans.
Mr. Schneider hopes a mainstay of the channel will be televised
obituaries. For a fee that has yet to be set, viewers will be
able to have a "This was your life" video made about their late
relatives, featuring interviews with family and friends.
"This was the idea which encouraged me to launch the
project," Mr. Schneider confided earlier this month. "Why not take
obituaries out of the newspapers and put them on television?"
Germany's funeral association, which represents 85 percent
of the country's undertakers, is backing the project. Kerstin Gemig, a
spokesman for the association, said more people were looking for
professional help in documenting the lives of people who had died.
Mr. Schneider said he hoped to destroy the taboo
surrounding the issues of death and dying in the Western World.
"Almost everything is aired on television nowadays, but
death and dying remain the big exception."

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Grotesque as
this seems, it seems somehow appropriate for anti-child Europe's
Culture of Death. Will this be the way that Europe ends? not with a
bang but a whimper?

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Meanwhile
India's population is growing exponentially. As Asia's star rises
while that of Europe declines, let's do what we can to serve the cause
of Christ on the other side of the globe. Father Thomas Rayar, a priest
of India's diocese of Thanjavur, will appeal to us this weekend on
behalf of his diocese. A short biographical sketch of Father Rayar is
to be found elsewhere in this bulletin.